I was tapped to give a speech at a group event for high school business students when the organizers had a cancellation, and I had to speak for an hour to these kids. I basically told my life story. The kids were engaged and very interested—they asked several amazing questions, which pumped me because it meant that they listened and wanted to learn—I was surprised at that actually. The last question they asked me really resonated. “If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?” And I thought, OK, this is a pivotal moment, I really need to think—so I paused, and I said, “I think that I would like to shift the world leadership paradigm to be more matriarchal and less patriarchal because men like to have wars, conquer things and essentially blow shit up!” They roared with laughter and then—I leaned in, spoke quietly and said, “I don’t hate men—I have four sons—and I think if women had the power we could focus on less war, more on environmental issues and work in a collaborative, more holistic world where we could focus on taking care of the planet and less about just taking care of ourselves!” I got a standing ovation—and I cried—because my next comment to them was to say, “Ya know why I am so moved? It is because I was down on your generation and you just taught me not to be down on you guys and to be hopeful that the world is gonna be OK!”

Phyllis Weiss Haserot, president of Practice Development Counsel, helps organizations and individuals solve inter-generational challenges among work colleagues and with clients to achieve better productivity and knowledge transfer, retention, succession planning and business development results. Connect with her through email, twitter, or LinkedIn

GENERATIONS AGE BREAKDOWN

Generations are defined by similar formative influences—social, cultural, political, economic—that existed as individuals of particular age cohorts were growing up. Given that premise, age breakdowns for each of the five generations currently in the workplace are roughly: